Amazon to lay off 16,000 employees after grocery shakeup, bringing total cuts to 30,000 since October
Brooke DiPalma ·
Senior Reporter
Wed, January 28, 2026 at 10:03 AM EST
2 min read
In this article:
Amazon (AMZN) is making major cuts to its corporate workforce for the second time in less than six months as it continues to adjust its staffing plans following a surge of hiring during the pandemic.
The company on Wednesday announced plans to eliminate 16,000 roles, with executive Beth Galetti writing in a blog post that the cuts are intended to reduce layers, increase ownership, and reduce bureaucracy.
Last October, Amazon laid off 14,000 workers after the company became "convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business."
In her note Wednesday, Galetti said the company does not plan large, rolling cuts to its workforce every few months.
In late 2024, CEO Andy Jassy said he wanted the company to "operate like the world's largest startup" as part of an announcement cutting management layers and setting new expectations about corporate staff coming to the office five days per week.
As of Sept. 30, Amazon had roughly 350,000 corporate employees.
This week's staff cuts also come after the company announced plans to close its Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go stores to focus on delivery services and expanding Whole Foods, which Amazon acquired in 2017.
"While we've seen encouraging signals in our Amazon-branded physical grocery stores, we haven't yet created a truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model needed for large-scale expansion," the company said. According to sources close to the matter, Amazon plans to evaluate each store Fresh and Go location to see which can be converted into Whole Foods stores.
Wedbush analyst Scott Devitt told clients in a note that Amazon's plans with grocery were an "important step forward in Amazon’s broader strategy and should help the company capture incremental share in perishable categories where they have struggled historically."
The company is expected to report its fiscal fourth quarter earnings report on Feb. 5 after market close.
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Brooke DiPalma is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X at @BrookeDiPalma or email her at bdipalma@yahoofinance.com.
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